Shock and Awe: Viral News Is Good News

The way I see it, the perfect popular news story has at least one of the following elements: blaming Barack Obama, hating Sarah Palin, or sex. If someone wrote an article called “Obama to blame for sex that made Sarah Palin stupid,” it would probably break the internet.

But, according to a new study, I might be wrong.

In a world full of negative news, scandals and gossip, what makes a story go viral, and get shared by readers? That’s the question two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania answer in a recent study. They logged The New York Times most e-mailed stories list every 15 minutes for six months, and then analyzed what they found. Their results are surprising, and paint a surprisingly hopeful picture.

The New York Times reports that news readers e-mailed stories with positive themes much more often than negative ones, and also showed a preference for longer, more complicated articles. Whether or not people send articles about antimatter and molecular chemistry to further a recipient’s education — or just to show off — is another matter. But either way, it’s a huge departure from the bite-size stories so many people worry are taking over the conversation.

If there’s a common thread running through frequently e-mailed stories it’s that popular ones force people to look at the world differently. Surprising stories, and particularly ones that either reverse an existing idea or make people realize the scale of the world, were e-mailed. Science stories did surprisingly well, even longer and more complicated ones, because they shook what people thought they knew.

Even controlling for factors like time spent on the Times homepage, time of publication, and section of the paper, the stories that got passed around the most were those that were “surprising, practically useful, emotion laden and positive.” Practical information was shared often, but positive and inspirational articles were the most viral. Awe, according to an algorithm created to judge the tone and emotional content of articles, was actually the biggest predictor of whether or not a story would be frequently e-mailed.

And the idea holds: Right now, the most-e-mailed story from The New York Times isn’t about earthquakes, or governors who may or may not have had sex with that woman. It’s an opinion column called “America Is Not Yet Lost.”

So, in light of what I’ve learned, here’s your new internet-breaking headline: “The world is huge, and you are small. But not as small as these billion-year-old particles we found on a giant spaceship.” Enjoy.See Also: